Control Systems & PLC's

Switching Power

Switch Power Plans by Creating a Shortcut or Hotkey

If you need to always customize the Power Saver and you feel annoying to follow such troublesome steps every time you want to switch it, today I will show you tricks to solve it ...create a shortcut or hotkey to switch Power Plans.

Use the powercfg Command

Windows 7 and Vista provide the powercfg command which you can use from the command prompt, and we'll have to use this tool to figure out the GUID, the internal ID that Windows uses(for the plan itself).

In order to find the power scheme GUID, open up a command prompt and type in the following:

powercfg –list

Note: It leave you with a list of the power plans you have assigned on your system, and the appropriate GUID for each.

In the screenshot, you will find that you can use the –setactive argument to actually switch between the plans from the command line, which is how we'll create the shortcut in the next step.

Create the Shortcut

You'll need to create a shortcut by right-clicking on the desktop and choosing New Shortcut.

Use the following in the application shortcut, replacing the GUID with your own:

powercfg -setactive

Note how it looks in the screenshot... yours should look the same (Of course, you can use /setactive "Name of Profile" instead of the GUID as an alternate option. ).

Note: Similarly you can repeat the same thing to create another shortcut for one of the other power plans.

Customize the Shortcut

After we have some new shortcuts, we can make them look better by tweaking the icon, and then assign a shortcut key. There are lots of great icons in the following Windows DLL file:

C:WindowsSystem32powercpl.dll

Also you can assign a shortcut key to switch power schemes on the fly.

After you're all done, you will have two new icons, fancy!

What's nice, you can use the Start Menu search box or Launchy to switch the schemes from the keyboard.

Alternate: Use the Mobility Center

Alternately you can also use the Win+X shortcut key combination to bring up the Mobility Center and quickly switch the power management mode (although it's not going to really be any quicker than using the tray icon, but still a useful tool!).

You can choose what you like from the ways we provide here. Enjoy yourself!

You can get more Windows 7 tips, Windows 7 Wallpapers, Windows 7 Software from http://www.Newton360.com

About the Author

You can get more Windows 7 tips, Windows 7 Wallpapers, Windows 7 Software from http://www.Newton360.com

How accurate are the voltage outputs in ATX switching power supply?

I measured the voltages but these are not exact at 5vdc, 12vdc, 3.3vdc, etc.. Why?

They're are not exact. In fact, my voltages are:
12v: 12.1
5v: 4.89
3.3v: 3.09

As long as it is not way off, or huge power spikes/drops, then it is fine.

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